My desire to ensure environmental sustainability.

Point blank on environmental issues.

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Born a Sufferer! Live a Conqueror! Die a Victor!

PART ONE:

Thanks and ululations fill the village. The sun has yet another responsibility
to accomplish. You have passed the first transformation headed to the next. The
well kept palace with a 24 hour CCTV surveillance has been destroyed! First few
months and many days in the new world prove difficult. Thickly woven materials
around your body replace the comfortable warm placenta. The lactic liquid
suckled and soft food supplements day-to-day meals in a while. Toothless and
weak jaws cannot manage tender foods. To your mum you are the raw clay that can
undergo pottery to produce the most envied product on earth. She will do
exactly that.

PART TWO:
There you grow strong. Feet fidgeting, as you gallop porridge from the green
plastic cup. A fully engaging battle between the molar teeth and that bone an
indication of strong jaws. In the oversize 'marbolo' T-shirt off to the stream
carrying a 5-litre 'elianto' container. The best swimmer in the river across
your shamba after an entourage of collecting firewood.

PART THREE:
Soon you will be headed to nursery school because your right hand can go
through the head to touch your left ear. In bare foot, you walk for km to
school and back. On your back the white school bag, a product of an abandoned
DAP fertilizer sack. The chilly mornings and rain seasons a great enemy to your
lice infested feet. Your next colleague gives a consolation that your feet are
at least better. His perfectly produce a broccoli picture! Somebody
accidentally steps on his fingers and the bell ringer has free time around- the
painful cry sets the whole school into attention.

Sometimes a cup of water sees you through the night because the hard working
woman's food basket is empty. She missed menial work today. This compels you to
have numerous stops on your way to school picking sugar cane twigs to please
the roaring stomach. Depending on the season, half-eaten guavas and loquats
fallen along the way serve the purpose. Your neighbor's slasher misses you by
an inch on trying to sneak into his passion fruit shamba. It is not your fault
to get into the mess. The hungry stomach needs to feed. That is so
daring!

The peaceful hen's hatchery journey cut short after three days as the eggs must
be sold to pay your activity fee balance. Your fully decorated uniform
alienates you from the smart colleagues. The patches represent almost all
favourite colours of Kenyan tribes. Very active in extracurricular activities
and of course the best in the curricular world.

Over the December holidays you to pretend the best geographer in map reading.
Up the highlands, down the valleys and across the streams you will visit almost
all relatives aiming to get textbooks, story books and topmarks.'Remember your
cousin was promoted to class eight, so tomorrow you have to go for his class
seven books,' your mum speaks in full composure. There you go across the hills
to accomplish the task. You get lost in some instances but thank God you
manage. I guess you would have used GPS to ease your work if it were
today.

PART FOUR:
The so difficult and trying moments help you build the bridge to higher heights
with hopes that tomorrow will be a brighter day. All through secondary with
life reluctant to improve financially, socially. . .still traumatizing moments.
Sharp sun rays penetrating the thatched roof gaps create a sigh of relief every
morning.Your cherished matress is that skin from the family cow that was
poisoned by the jealous-for-notning neighbour. Since then no few coins from
milk. It was the only cow left after a series of dead of calfs and their lovely
mothers. You very well know who did it! He has no apparent reason for this cow
genocide. In fact he started with the dogs and chicken. The chicken your
grandma gave to you when you visited her last christmas! God forbid!

The prayers, songs, homilies from clergymen, bible sharing with friends keep
you going.The persistent guy as always you achieve academically. Your are
headed into great heights; to conquer the unconquerable, achieve the unachievable and accomplish the dream in great honour of the Almighty!

PART FIVE:
There you find yourself in campus. That 'life is up there' phrase a very great
driving force and inspirational day in day out. Social, religious and political
shocks too hard to absorb. Financial life another hell on earth! Back from the
mess/mabatini, your roommate is feasting on chicken/chipo, hamburger. .
.anything delicious, expensive and hard to get. Colleagues outings the order of
the day. I guess your best outing is that visit to your long lost distant
relative of yours at Kibera. What a reunion! Once in a while you will get
friends. Others genuine and others with ill intentions. Your wit manages to
filter them out.

Running and panting across the street to repair your friends laptop. It crashed
in your hands when you were typing that 'must type' assigment. The lecturer is
a no nonsence person. He will take ages to get back the assignment marks. Worse
of all, he will make sure your transcript has achieved the equality rule of
accommodating the disabled; and for that reason, he will give you an undeserved
'D'! You are the chief consultant on the class timetable, assignment deadlines
and postponed classes.You have been very humble through campus life excelling
in all helpful fields.

You have proved your critiques wrong. Those who always had you in the news for
all wrong reasons. They said you cheated in your final exams to book a place in
that institution. You wonder why your transcript can't prove them right. You
are on long holiday for a few months, they say the in disciplined guy has been
expelled from campus. You greet the old men in a salute because you are in a
hurry, they confirm their fears on how spoilt campus people look down upon
them. As one philosopher once put it that that you may not be able to stop
people from having a bad perception about you but you can keep them from being
right about it, you endeavor to apply that.Trying to suggest an improved way of
looking into things, the child is getting beyond boundaries. Culture and
traditions do not allow such practices. They insist that what they found there
forefathers practicing will always be right. Surely, even quaint traditions?
Out of date farming methods? Unsustainability? It is very ironical that the
very people are feeling on the upgrade that their clan has learned
children.
* * *
Some think education is just but an accolade to make you famous. Education is
beyond that! It empowers people. Education is a poison to poverty, laziness,
social evils, foolishness. It opens golden gates to development, prosperity,
sustainability, fair and equitable sharing of resources. Thanks to the Almighty
that most people are getting these facts in their fingertips.
* * *

Powers to read empower the young guy. You are back to the village to transform
acquired knowledge into someting useful. Those project proposals go through as
expected. Some development enemies are still against your project
implementation. With cooperation from most people, you succeed in setting the
community water project that has helped in irrigation and domestic uses. The
community is producing surplus agricultural products for sale regionally. The
underway village electrification will ensure that no family will be suffering
to get paraffin in their lanterns. Your schooling siblings, cousins and
neighbours will be studying to saturation because lighting is no longer a
problem. Your grandfather will be listening to his favourite local radio
station all through. Dry cells era will be a history.

You decide to partly fund that neighbor's child through high school. Don't
forget he is the very person who was a nuisance during your childhood and
schooling days. Those chicken and cows he poisoned! You never held a grudge.
This brings a great reconciliation between the two families. Surely, what can't
you do? You are really confirming the power of education to those development
enemies. With that spirit, everything will be a dream come true. The SUFFERING
child has transformed into a CONQUERING intellect, and will indeed, die VICTOR!

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Nature never forgives nor does it forget; I love it (nature) for that, cause it is the ultimate truth! I believe writing/talking about it, can save us from that wrath and help conserve it. So, I have decided to write...please help me read it. I promise you lots of creative work; poetry, stories, fiction...articles! Feel motivated to come back for more :)